Chasing Shadows (Saving Galerance, Book 1) (6 page)

Then her head turned, and she titled her chin up to the sky
and raised her fingers above her eyes to the rising eastern sun so that the
shadow of her small hand was cast across her face.

Hunter didn’t realize that he had been holding his breath
until she started forward and was coming towards his checkpoint, and he found
that he was practically without air.

“Morning Hunter,” she told him with a gentle smile gracing
her face. “I’m sorry about yesterday.”

Suddenly Hunter’s mind drew a blank. What had she to
apologize to him for? He couldn’t think of one thing to save his life.

“About getting clay on your hands,” she softly reminded him.

Apologize for that, he wondered. Why? He almost couldn’t
bring himself to wash his hands last night.

“Please,” he said, shaking his head. “Don’t feel bad about
that. There’s something oddly pleasing about the smell of clay.”

“I think so too,” she agreed, looking timidly down at her
shoes. When she looked back up at him, her silver-blue eyes held in them a
courage he had not seen before. “I’d like to try it again,” she told him, the faint
hint of a blush on her cheeks.

Hunter couldn’t think of what she meant, but then she slowly
raised her arm, and her hand was outstretched, ready for him to shake it.
Raising his own hand, he clasped hers in a warm handshake, and before she pulled
away, she brought her other hand up and placed it on top. He felt something small
and light drop into his palm, and when she drew away, he found a small piece of
pottery inside. But it wasn’t just the shard of a broken bowl; it was a tiny
figurine of a bird. Though it was so small in his hands, its wingspan made it
appear majestic and important, like it was doing more than just flying when it
opened its wings.

“Thank you,” she said, looking down at the clay bird in his
hand, and then up to his eyes.

“What…” He gulped. “What’s this for?”

“For my friend,” she answered.

She gave him one last smile before she continued forward,
and Hunter realized he couldn’t even form the words to say goodbye.

He stared at her retreating form, at how her skirt swayed
and tickled the ground as she walked, and then looked back to the bird in his
palm. A single dot had been placed for the bird’s eye, and he looked into it as
if it could understand him, and all Hunter was trying to tell him over and over
was to please tell her. Please tell her to make it stop. Please make the
dizziness stop.

*

Norabel’s nimble hands ran up along the spinning bowl, and
the clay morphed behind her fingers in graceful sways. Though she had been
making bowls for over five years now, and had made more than she could possibly
count, it never ceased to amaze her how wonderfully majestic the wet clay could
appear as it transformed in her hands. How unbelievably special was it to
simply picture something, and with a little guidance from her fingers, to have
it appear before her.

When the bowl had finally been formed, reaching a state she
liked to call “a simple perfection,” she walked to the kiln to set it in with
the others. Then, since it was lunchtime, she went to the small basin of water
that was placed by the window, and began to wash her hands. Yet, what was
normally a time of simple enjoyment and anticipation for the lunch hour, was
today weighed down by heavy thoughts.

Though her morning interaction with Hunter had cheered her
spirits up a bit, the events of last night were too troubling to forget. She
hadn’t spoken to Mason since he had stormed out of the cave on them. And though
Logan had gone to her and told her that his brother hadn’t meant what he said,
part of her didn’t believe him. She knew Mason thought of her as a child. He
may have been angry when he said it, but it didn’t mean it wasn’t true. And a
part of her even thought that she deserved that.

At lunch time, many of the workers in the western commons
section went over to the food market that lied in the middle of the sector to
buy their lunches. Washing her hands, Norabel exited her portion of the
Workhouse and came out into the common area between the three stations. Delia,
the potter that made the village’s plates, had just gone out the door to take her
lunch. However, Wren, the potter in charge of creating the more specialized
pieces of pottery, stood by the door with an expression of anxiety on her face.

Though Norabel liked to make friends with everyone she met,
she could definitely say that she got along much better with Wren than Delia.
Wren was older and more mature, with brown hair neatly pinned up in a bun
behind her head, and olive eyes forever focused on the task at hand. She was
always careful to be polite, and she put just as much effort into her work as
Norabel did. Yet, at only thirty-five years of age, Wren was far too exhausted
and worn out than she should have been. She had never married or had kids, and
she never seemed to have time for fun.

“Is everything alright Wren?” Norabel asked, coming to stand
in front of her.

“What?” Wren asked, suddenly turning away from the open
door. It was uncharacteristically absentminded of her, and it made Norabel even
more concerned.

“Is it your mother?” she asked, remembering that Wren had
mentioned a few weeks ago that her mother’s spirits were low.

Wren gripped a few handfuls of her apron, admitting, “She’s
been taken ill. Last night she was running a fever. The doctor got it to go
down, but…” she trailed off, looking back out the door and to the rooftops in
the distance.

“I’m sorry,” Norabel offered. “Is there anything I can do to
help?”

Wren shook her head, still deep in thought. For a few
moments she stood there, as if in another world. Then, coming out of it, she
announced, “I’m sorry, I have to go. I promised her I would stop by at lunch.”
She stepped through the door and rambled onto the street.

“Good luck,” Norabel called out after her, but she doubted
that Wren heard her, for she seemed so overtaken with worry that a whole fleet
of horses could have passed by in front of her, and she might have just walked
straight through without noticing.

Heading over to the food market nearby, Norabel had a hard
time deciding what she wanted for lunch that day. Wren’s current situation,
coupled with the stress of what had happened last night in the cave, made her
stomach churn in anxiousness. She knew she wouldn’t be able to eat much, and so
ended up leaving the food market with only an apple in her hand.

Her favorite place to eat lunch was underneath a tree that
stood across from the Potter’s Workhouse. It provided the perfect balance of
shade and light, and smelled faintly of a green herb that her grandfather used
to steep in his tea. However, this time, when she came upon the tree with her apple
in hand, she found someone waiting for her.

“Mason?” she asked in confusion. She looked about her for a
moment to see if anyone else had come with him, but he was alone.

He had been sitting in the dirt before she found him, but
when he heard his name, he promptly stood up.

“Norabel,” he said with a curt nod. “Logan said he spoke
with you last night.” He rubbed a hand on his cheek and had to squint his eyes
as he looked at her, for the sun was behind her back.

“He did,” she replied, glancing down at her apple before
going to take a seat on the ground.

“Good.” He nodded, bending down to sit next to her. He took
in a sniff of air before asking, “So, how are you today?”

Norabel rubbed her apple on her skirt apron. “I’m fine,” she
replied, letting no anger or sadness sneak through her words.

There was silence between them, but then she felt a tug on
her arm, and she looked over to see Mason holding her wrist.

“Are you sure?” he asked.

Norabel stared down intently at her apple, avoiding where
his hand held onto her arm.

“Yes,” she said, giving a simple response, as if someone had
merely asked her if the lunch hour had come yet.

“Good.” He nodded his head again.

When he took his hand away, she finally turned to look at
him.

“Logan isn’t eating with you today?” she asked, trying to
make polite conversation that would draw their thoughts away from last night.

“Nah. He wanted to eat with Aleta today.”

Norabel smiled. Aleta was Logan’s girl, and she was one of
the sweetest people she had ever met in Breccan. She worked as a tailor and a
dress maker. In fact, she had been the one to sew the white and light blue
dress Norabel was wearing right now. She was glad that someone as kind as Logan
had found a girl like her.

“It is a nice day to share your lunch with somebody,” she remarked,
turning her face up to the leaves of the tree.

Mason scratched an itch on his head, making no comment. Though
he had been the one to seek her out, it was clear that he wasn’t in the mood
for talking. At least, not about something as frivolous as the weather
conditions for lunch.

“Mason,” she asked slowly, deciding on a topic of more
importance. “Why didn’t you want to tell Logan and Archer about the arrow?”

He shifted in the dirt as he thought about this.

“Because I didn’t want to worry them,” he answered. Then he
glanced over at her, giving her the barest of smiles, and added, “And I didn’t
want to let you down. They might have wanted to drop the load if they’d have
known. Get rid of the evidence before we snuck back into Breccan.”

“Aren’t you curious as to who shot it? And why?” she asked.

He shrugged. “Of course.”

“Then I think we should go back to Valor Wood. See if we can
find any clues as to who was hiding in the trees last night,” she suggested.

“I suppose you’re right.”

She rubbed her thumb across the top of her apple. “So,
should we go then?”

“What? Just the two of us?”

She scrunched her brow, wondering why that should be an
issue. “Well, invite Logan and Archer if you want,” she said. “But then you’ll
have to tell them what happened.”

He cleared his throat and rubbed at a speck of dirt on his
hand. “I guess it would make sense to only have two people. Too many and we
might trample over any trace that the bowman left behind.” Standing up from the
ground, he loomed larger than life over her, saying, “Meet me in the woods
after you get off from work.”

He turned to go, and as she watched him walk down the dirt
path, she felt an unescapably charged and anxious feeling welling up in her stomach
and pushing against the fragile tissue of her lungs. Mason had never made her
feel like this when they were younger. He was a different person back then, a
gentler boy that somehow seemed much wiser than the man now. But Norabel was
sure she would find him again; she just needed to wait a little longer to see
that inquisitive boy with bright blue eyes and a beaming smile…

…Mason wiped the charcoal off his hands and stepped back
from the cave wall to proudly stare at the large, arching set of wings he had
drawn. From outside the cave entrance, Norabel happily hummed a tune as she
waited for him to call her inside.

“Alright Norabel, you can come in now,” he called out. He
furiously rubbed his hands on his pants, trying to get all the dirt off, and
ran a hand down his mop of black hair. At fifteen years of age, he never
thought about brushing his hair, but preferred it to stick out in tuffs like
that of a carefree boy that spent all his time chasing rabbits in a meadow.

When Norabel tentatively stepped in, he cleared his throat
and looked back to his drawing on the cave wall.

“Mason, it’s amazing,” she marveled, standing next to him to
admire it. “It looks just like their wings.”

“I know.”

Norabel’s eyes flew to him. “What do you mean you know? The Woodland
Albatross never comes as far as Breccan.”

A wide grin broke out on his face as he admitted, “I found a
man that had a book on them. He let me look through the pages and I…”

“But Mason,” she cut in, shaking her head, “that’s
dangerous. You could get in trouble! If anyone found out you were…”

It was Mason’s turn to cut her off as he placed a gentle
hand on her shoulder. “It’s alright. No one will know.” His mouth curled up in
a smile as he added, “It was worth it if it made you happy.”

“I’m already happy,” she told him, her wide, starry eyes
looking up to him.

“You mean I did all this for nothing?” he joked, glancing
back to the wings on the wall. “I guess I’ll just have to erase it then.”

He walked up to the charcoal drawing and put his sleeve up as
though he was about to start wiping it off, when Norabel gave out a squeak
behind him.

“No!” she exclaimed, her thin fingers slipping around his
arm to stop him.

Mason laughed to let her know he was only joking. “Come on,”
he said. “Why don’t you try them out? See how they fly.”

There was a small fire lit on the other side of the cave,
and the light from the entrance was not enough to erase all sign of their
shadows. Mason carefully led Norabel a few feet away from the wall and
positioned her so that her shadow lined up perfectly with the pair of wings.

“How do they look?” she asked, trying to turn her head to
see.

“Like they were born for you,” he answered.

Norabel reached out for one of his hands and clasped it with
both of hers. “Do you think they ever talk to each other?” she asked.

“Who?”

“Our guardians. Yours and mine. Do you think they’re friends
because we are?”

Mason’s mouth scrunched in thought. “Well, I sure hope so.
Because I’m not planning on leaving you anytime soon.”

As he said these last words, he reached out for her waist
and lifted her in the air, spinning her around. Norabel laughed when he set her
back down and tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear.

“I suppose they’re just gonna have to deal with it,” Mason
said.